Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1887-09-10
1EYTHs o. - LNpIA.
Hotg the Hlffsrs Of Astofe1lt Greece Came t.
TEL Of Fabulous Beings.

]
Ten Of Fabulous Beings.
The Greeks accepted without hesita-
ton the tales that were told Of men
without noses and with two Orifices
above the mouth for the purpose OF
! breathing, which, It has been suggested,
may have been an unconscious earica-
ture Of the AIongols, says writer in
the Asjatic Quarterly BeUiel0, refer
ring to the fables of old Greek histo-
rians. The pigmies, only three spans
! IN height who We're warred upon by
cranes and by partridges as large as
geese, may have been a dwarfish race
/ dwelling in woods and at the foot of
mountains who earned a Precarious
| livelihood as bowmen and trappers.
BhOtan people, whose ears are enorm-
ously elongated by artificial means,
may have been represented as a tribe
whose ears reached to the ground, and
which were otherwise so huge that
their owners were able to coil them
selves up and go to sleep In them. The
swift runners who could run down
horse might have found their analogies
within quite a recent period, and may
perchance still find them in some of
the native states. The fable of the
gold-digging ant, large as wild foxes,
has been long since explained as re-
| ferring to Thibetan miners, men of low
stature who inhabit the mountainous
country to the north of Kashmir. The
animals mistaken for ants may very
well have been marmots, which are
said to be plentiful in those parts. As
for the mOnstrous shapes which no
traveller pretends to have seen with his
own eyes, they existed no doubt in
bright colors on the inner walls of pa
godas, and were intended to depict the
Rakshasas or demons. odious alike to
men and gods. Such was the probable
origin Of the beings who were born
without mouths and lived on the aroma
Of fruits and flowers; of those whose
feet We're turned the wrong way, the
heels being in front while the instep
and toes were behind; of those who
bore the head of a dog and were furn-
ished with claws, who lived by hunting
and fOwling, and clothed themselves
with the skins of wild beasts; of those
who had the ears of a dog, erect hair
and shaggy breasts, and with one eye
in the center of the forehead; finally of
those without nostrils, who devoured
raw meat and all manner Of abomina-
tions, and died in their youth, ungainIy
creatures with the upper lip hanging
| over the lower. OF no greater i'm
| pOrtance are the marvellous animals,
/ enormously deIineated rather than in
| vented, such as serpents with mem
branOus wings, that flew by night
horses with deers' heads surmOunted by
a black horn, with legs without joint,
and with the tail of a pig; tigers twice
the size of a lion; the phoenix sprung
from the suns rays, that lived its life OF
| 5000 years in India, and, singing its
own dirge, died in its nest of aromatic
| herbs hard by the fountains Of the
| Nile. 1t would be sheer waste Of time
to bestow further thought upon the
| childish inventions fathered by PhilO-
stratus upon ApoIlOnius Of Tyana, or
rather upon the journal of his fellow
traveller, Damis. Quite a little inven-
| ton is due Latin writer's who profess
to have derived their information from
Indian merchants settled at Alexandria,
or from apOcryphal embassies sup
posed to have been dispatched by In
dian kings to Roman emperors. In
more than one of these romances al
fusion is made to the loadstone islands
in the Indian Ocean which were be-
Heyed to draw iron bolts out of ships
at an incredible distance, and which
have been thus explained by the fact
that the seas in question were naviga-
ted by vessels the planks of which were
bound together by ropes and coir,
without the use of nails and bolts